“Krasnoyarsk, in my view, is a suitable place. It is a geographical centre of our country. The distance to Vladivostok from it is nearly the same as to Moscow.”

Krasnoyarsk is a large city with developed infrastructure. It has a good airport, magnificent nature and wonderful people, he added.

“We must think about it,” he said.

The president also wondered why major Russian companies had settled in Moscow. “Why do all of them sit in Moscow? Let them work also in the territory. It will bring more revenues to regional and local budgets. They have just stuck to Moscow. It is traditionally formed so. And it is rather difficult to press them out of Moscow streets. But we will work constantly on this,” Putin said.

“There are symbols that are uniting in life of every nation. Moscow is one of such symbols, but it does not mean all the structures must be concentrated in one city,” he added.